REPUBLICANS MUST develop "an entirely new relationship" with unionists if they are to achieve their goal of ending British jurisdiction on the island of Ireland, Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said yesterday.
However, Mr Adams conceded there was an understandable frustration at the lack of political progress currently being made by the Sinn Féin/DUP administration. He blamed this on the DUP's "refusal to engage properly".
Addressing the annual commemoration of the 1981 hunger strikes in Derry yesterday, he vowed that Sinn Féin would not shirk its responsibilities or bow to Unionist "intransigence".
"The message to unionism is clear: if unionists want to exercise power, if they want an Assembly, and an Executive, taking meaningful decisions, then there is a price to be paid. And that price is sharing power with republicans in a partnership government of equals. Anything less is not acceptable; anything less will not work."
The DUP, he said, now found itself in a place it never wanted to be - a partnership government in which a DUP minister has an equal status with a Sinn Féin minister in the joint office of first and deputy minister.
"This means that the process of change is slow - certainly much slower than the vast majority of citizens want. There is, therefore, an understandable frustration and annoyance, and not just among nationalists and republicans, at the lack of progress and at the DUP's refusal to engage properly."
He cited the example of new rules on the use of Irish, and the transfer of powers on policing and justice. "The vast majority of citizens want the transfer of powers to take place. They want the institutions to be delivering for them on all these matters, as well as on other issues, like rising energy costs and the crisis in the housing market."